New Lifetime High Today: GNC Holdings (GNC)

Trade-Ideas LLC identified GNC Holdings (GNC) as a new lifetime high candidate

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified GNC Holdings ( GNC) as a new lifetime high candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified GNC Holdings as such a stock due to the following factors:

GNC has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $99.0 million.

GNC Holdings, Inc. operates as a specialty retailer of health and wellness products. It operates through three segments: Retail, Franchise, and Manufacturing/Wholesale. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 1.1%. GNC has a PE ratio of 21.2. Currently there are 6 analysts that rate GNC Holdings a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 1 rates it a hold.

The average volume for GNC Holdings has been 1.1 million shares per day over the past 30 days. GNC has a market cap of $5.1 billion and is part of the services sector and retail industry. The stock has a beta of 1.29 and a short float of 5.6% with 2.82 days to cover. Shares are up 61.9% year to date as of the close of trading on Friday.

TheStreet Quant Ratings rates GNC Holdings as a buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, revenue growth, notable return on equity and good cash flow from operations. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

Investors have apparently begun to recognize positive factors similar to those we have mentioned in this report, including earnings growth. This has helped drive up the company's shares by a sharp 38.54% over the past year, a rise that has exceeded that of the S&P 500 Index. Turning to the future, naturally, any stock can fall in a major bear market. However, in almost any other environment, the stock should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed nice gains in the past year.

GNC HOLDINGS INC has improved earnings per share by 17.7% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, GNC HOLDINGS INC increased its bottom line by earning $2.29 versus $1.18 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($2.88 versus $2.29).

GNC's revenue growth trails the industry average of 19.9%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 9.2%. Growth in the company's revenue appears to have helped boost the earnings per share.

The company's current return on equity greatly increased when compared to its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a signal of significant strength within the corporation. When compared to other companies in the Specialty Retail industry and the overall market, GNC HOLDINGS INC's return on equity exceeds that of the industry average and significantly exceeds that of the S&P 500.

Net operating cash flow has increased to $31.31 million or 41.33% when compared to the same quarter last year. The firm also exceeded the industry average cash flow growth rate of 13.89%.